Big News Network.com Saturday 27th September, 2014
MONROVIA, Liberia - A doctor in rural Liberia, desperately trying to treat his many Ebola patients, says he's had good results with a treatment he tried out of sheer desperation that was intended for treatment of the HIV virus.
Dr. Gobee Logan administered the drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients, and all but two survived. That's a 7% mortality rate compared to the 70% death rate for the more than 6,500 confirmed Ebola cases across the region, according to the World Health Organisation.
According to Logan, the 13 patients who survived received the lamivudine drug in the first five days of their illness, while the two who did not recover, were already between five and eight days into the virus' attack on their bodies.
"I'm sure that when [patients] present early, this medicine can help," Logan said. "I've proven it right in my center." He is, however, aware of the fact that the western medical community will criticise his findings as based on too small a study.
In order to prove the effectiveness of the HIV drug in treating Ebola, a much larger patient population would be required, with half given lamivudine and the other half given a placebo. For Logan, however, such matters aren't his primary concern.
"Our people are dying and you're taking about studies?" he said to a CNN reporter. "It's a matter of doing all that I can do as a doctor to save some people's lives."
Asked about the possible liver damage complications of lamivudine, Logan said that the near-certain death from Ebola outweighed the risks associated with his treatment. The doctor said he got the idea to try lamivudine when he read in a scientific journals that HIV and Ebola replicate inside the body in much the same way.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told CNN that theoretically, Logan's approach has some merit. Lamivudine is a nucleocide analog, with other drugs in this class being studied to treat Ebola.
CNN helped the two men get in contact with one another, with plans for further collaboration between the two perhaps paving the way for ground-breaking strides in Ebola treatment.
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